Quick Tip: BIOS Auto Power-On

Just a little tech tip for getting your day started on the right foot. By accessing the system BIOS of your computer, you can actually have it turned on and ready to work before you wake up in the morning (or before you arrive home from work, etc.)

The BIOS is the base code that runs when you turn a PC on. It runs before the operating system boots up (something you may have seen if your operating system ever crashed). As such, it has direct access to all the system devices (hardware such as the disk drive, harddrive, and video cards).

One thing this allows you to do is to set a time for the computer to power on without the user pressing any buttons (using the internal clock, which runs even while the computer is “powered off”).

To access the BIOS, you’ll need to turn your computer off, then reboot. As the machine turns on, you will need to hold down a particular key (typically one of the F keys) to interrupt the BIOS before it loads and boots your operating system. To find out what key you need to press, check out this very comprehensive list of BIOS access keys:

How to access/enter Motherboard BIOS

Then, in most BIOS systems, you will find an option for scheduled power-on, typically in the Power Management section of the BIOS. Most BIOS’s only have bare bones options here (1 time a day, set to daily or weekdays only, etc.), but if you have a fairly regular schedule, it can be very useful.